Chapter Text
They’re doing weight training today because God heard Bitty’s prayers. God heard them, laughed, and said, “Eric Richard Bittle, you made Holster weep when you taught the team Coach’s suicide sprints. You’re going to lift weights, and you’re going to grin and bear it.”
Jack had caught onto the fact that Eric’s legs are stronger than they look earlier on in the game than Hall or Murray and had nipped his old routine in the bud. Gone were his comfortable reps of leg presses and calf raises — only permissible as warmups under Jack’s new regime — and in their place were the kinds of upper body exercises he’d thought he’d left behind once he gave up on pairs skating for good.
“Need a knee up, Bits?” Holster offers with a saccharine smile while Bitty eyes the pull-up bar. He’s not allowed to use the pull-down machine because he has to adjust the settings to such different specifications that everyone else on the team, but no one seems to care that the machine can be adjusted while Bitty can’t make himself tall enough for the bar.
“I dunno, I don’t want you to pull that stitch in your side from yesterday,” he grins back at Holster just as innocently until Ransom comes to collect his crying child. Holster leaves Bitty with a withering glare, but given that Bitty probably could have used the help, he’s not sure who won this round.
“It totally counts as a deadlift if I boost Bitty up to the bar,” Nursey insists, strolling into the weight room with Chowder following at a nervous clip. Dex is carrying three clean rags, trailing in after the others, the whites of his eyes already apparent with the intensity of his frustration.
Jack and Shitty are the last in, which isn’t ideal because Bitty really doesn’t enjoy having the object of his pathetically unrequited crush watch while he tries to find the most stackable things in the room to make a little stool.
“If you’re only lifting Bittle’s body weight in a single rep, we should see about trading you to the lacrosse team.”
While the team laughs at Nursey’s expense, Bitty preps on the balls of his feet, letting his own potential energy tighten the muscles in his legs like a pair of springs. There’s no question that Bitty will be able to jump high enough. He has his gloves on, and the floor is padded, so the worst that could happen if he loses his grip and falls is that Nursey won’t be the most embarrassed person in the room.
He’s about to spring up when Jack places a hand on each hip and hoists him in the air like a ragdoll.
“You could dislocate your shoulder doing that,” Jack says mildly, and if it were anyone but Jack, it would sound like friendly concern. Because it’s Jack, though, and because Bitty is a hopeless romantic, he sounds protective and proprietary. His thumbs pet the glossy fabric of Eric’s shorts absently, just catching the slope of his hipbone on each pass.
Jack’s cheek twitches with a measured smirk, and he says, “I can do this for a while, but you can grab the bar whenever you want.”
“Yeah, well, when you can do resistance training with your body weight, you can talk then, Mr. Zimmermann.”
Bitty grabs on and channels his fluttery, nervous energy into his pull-ups, and disguises his tiny, wistful sigh as Jack lets go of him as a huff of air.
“Maybe another time,” Jack says. “I’m taking a page out of your book today.”
“Pecan pie is my favorite,” Bitty grunts through his pull-up, “but if you’re not gonna say it right, I’d rather you didn’t make it at all.”
Chowder usually spots Shitty while he does his bench presses because they lift about the same, and then they’ll swap; it just doesn’t ever seem to go as well for Chowder. His arms are beginning to tremble with the strain of the last set, but Shitty’s too busy trying to contort himself so his foot can reach to tap Bitty’s toe in a makeshift high five.
“Fuckin’ smoked him.”
“If we don’t have a goalie on Friday because you let the barbell crush Chowder, I’m personally delivering you to Mrs. Chow,” Dex snaps from behind the other bench.
“Shit, Chow, you gotta say something, you beautiful bastard!”
“I probably would have been fine!” Chowder insists hotly, waving off Shitty’s officious hands now that he’s been relieved of the barbell.
Bitty can’t help but notice as he drops lightly to his feet, shaking out his hands and arms before rolling his shoulders, that he’s finished his first set before Jack’s even started. It’s not the kind of thing that happens every day, so he breezes by the leg press Jack’s adjusting on his way to the butterfly machine.
“I haven’t used the leg press in over a year,” Bitty observes, setting up for his own chest flies.
His breath catches when Jack reclines against the padded back and braces his feet against the sled. Just like everyone else on the team, he’s dressed to work out. While the other guys seem to have finally gotten the memo about dressing like the boys who used to kick Bitty’s chair during sex ed., Jack wears the compression gear he favors for games.
Jack folds himself in half right in front of Bitty’s eyes, thighs pressing all along his torso, and the snug black fabric that shadows every divot slides at the hem to reveal dizzying snatches of muscles and skin. There are so many layers of him that Eric’s overwhelmed trying to understand just how he’s managed to get himself zig-zagged back-thighs-calves. Honestly, Bitty had thought he was the flexible one on the team.
Ransom grunts, “He’s jealous of your bangin’ booty, bro.”
“Fifteen,”
“Fuck you, Holtzy, I was at twenty!”
“I took off five. I figured if you had enough energy to chirp Jack, you’ve been holding back,”
“Bitty, your dad’s suicides fucking broke him,” Ransom bites off, powering through his extra presses with poor humor.
Holster starts back at fifteen again with a vindictive laugh and says, “I’m gonna bring you down with me, bro. Sixteen.”
Bitty snickers and starts on his chest flies, ignoring the way his heart’s already fluttering like a bird’s wings when he hasn’t done much more than warm up yet.
“He’s not totally wrong,” Jack says with downright offensive ease, straightening his legs.
Eric accidentally lets the weights slam to the ground, their clattering adding to the din of the room and the impact setting his teeth to rattling.
“Pardon?”
Jack’s rhythm on the leg press is smooth and controlled, and the flex of his thighs, only half covered by his shorts, comes into high relief as he lowers the sled gradually on its incline. Without entirely meaning to, Bitty picks back up on his machine, meeting Jack’s pace.
“Your squats have been paying off, and it’s been ages since I took day just to work on my lower body.”
“You’re chirping me, right?” Bitty huffs. “You’re just —”
“You’ve put on a lot of mass since New Year’s, Bittle. You’re an inspiration.”
It cannot possibly mean what it sounds like — that Jack’s noticed the slow-but-steady progress of Bitty’s hockey butt. That Jack’s been looking at Bitty’s butt enough that he’s noticed the difference a few months’ squats with Ransom have made. Obviously, Bitty’s noticed that his pants fit a little more snugly in the hips and thighs, but they do still fit.
He hasn’t been keeping count, but he figures he’s probably done enough to constitute a full set, so he eases his arms into his lap and collects his thoughts. Pressing his water bottle to the back of his neck and letting the condensation trick him into feeling less like a sweaty disaster helps a little, but not enough that he can tear his eyes away from Jack.
He’s never, never had problems staring at boys in the locker room. He’s always been too afraid of the consequences to make eye contact with anyone before he came to Samwell. Now that he’s here, these boys are so like his family that getting hot and bothered about them is as much a non-issue as going for dips in the lake with his cousins is back at home.
Eric’s always been proud that none of his teammates have ever had to worry about him peeking while they’re getting dressed, even if Rans and Holster both seemed mortally offended when they learned he hadn’t. He loves being able to hold his chin up with dignity whenever the ESPN anchors that look like Coach talk about the problems with having a gay kid on the team.
The thing here, though, is that Jack’s not even doing anything provocative. He’s wearing what he always wears to training, and if he’s shifting up his routine, he has good reason. Jack can’t help that when he pulls his legs in he looks like he’s waiting for someone (Eric) to come between his legs and put their (Eric’s) shoulders under his knees. It’s the way the machine is designed to operate that has Jack perfectly poised to have fingers (belonging to Eric) work him gently open until he’s relaxed enough to bottom with his legs sandwiched between his chest and Eric’s (Eric’s, Eric’s.)
Jack had brought up Bitty’s butt, in Bitty’s own flimsy defense, but how much of a surprise would it really be to learn that Jack was evaluating his training progress even outside the parameters of the C?
It wouldn’t be one. Not at all. Jack was just being the great captain he’s always been, managing to tease Bitty in the process; in return, Eric Bittle has become every straight athlete’s worst nightmare. Wonderful.
He’s so embarrassed that he powers through the rest of his sets without noticing that Jack’s moved on to his next station. He manages to think only twice about the fact that it’s the first time he’s ever imagined himself topping.
Bitty’s small, so he always assumed when he got around to having sex with someone else, he would be on the receiving end. It’s not something he’s opposed to, and he’s definitely come to the conclusion on his own through extensive research that he likes being filled up. Still, he’s never even thought about what it would be like to slip inside someone, and if that someone were as beautiful as Jack —
It’s in his best interest, he decides, to get his weights and kneel behind the preacher bench until he’s better able to control the sudden, pointed aim of his aimless thoughts.
The dumbbells are marked with his name. No one talks about it anymore, but when the tadpoles had come on their tour, they’d asked why some girl named “E. Bittle” kept her things in the men’s weight room, and Bitty’d wanted to crawl into his locker.
Eric leans over the bench, both arms extended with a weight in each hand, and hopes the procedure will help him clear his thoughts.
Trying not to think about something only makes it more difficult to stop thinking about the thing. He’d learned that his first week in the Haus when Shitty’s bait and tackle were on full display so often that Bitty couldn’t look at him without imagining the freckle on his left adductor and the surprising coppery sheen of his pubic hair.
It would only be an exercise in self-flagellation for Bitty not to think about Jack doing deadlifts on the other side of the room, laughing, finally a little winded, at Nursey’s losing battle with the cable machine.
It’s not like Eric’s intentionally having impure thoughts about his captain. He’s not ogling him or propositioning him. He should cut himself some slack; it’s what a person does about their unpleasant thoughts that shows their character.
That sounds like it’s probably true. Shitty might’ve said it before.
His curls stretch new and exciting muscles in his arms, adding to the chorus of minor complaints he can feel just starting to burn throughout his upper body. In about six hours he’ll be cursing the day he found Samwell University on a list of LGBT friendly schools, but another six hours after that will probably have him feeling blissfully achy and ready to sink into his bed.
This is when Jack decides to do his weighted lunges across the room, headed straight for Bitty.
He can only stop for a moment to be thankful that he’s got the view he has from this angle, because it’s bad enough that he’s at eye level with the broad expanse of Jack’s quads as he sinks almost to one knee, face focused, chin tucked tightly against his collar. He’s finally gotten to the point of his workout where he’s starting to show the effort, cheeks vibrant and his chest moving deeply with steady breaths.
If Bitty had seen this act from behind, there’d have been nothing left of him to bury at the funeral.
“You’ll be holding your own in the scrum in no time, eh?” Jack coughs, letting the barbell fall to the floor with a shuddering thud. Bitty’s close enough to see that Jack’s legs are quivering while he adjusts the Roman chair for his height.
“Back extensions are upper body,” Bitty mutters blithely, focusing with uncharacteristic intensity on what number comes after eighteen. He didn’t do great in calc, but he’d squeaked by with a C. He thinks that probably qualifies him to count into the double digits.
Jack climbs right on up onto the chair, draping his abdomen over the cushion. It’s pure coincidence that Bitty finishes his first set and lets his weights roll to the floor at the same moment Jack secures his heels. Eric flexes and releases his arms, disguising his distraction as a little scowl, and Jack smirks over his shoulder.
“Compound exercise, Bittle. They work the glutes, too.”
And, well, yes. Bitty can see that for himself, because the universe is proving again that it isn’t an impartial observer. Some quirk of fate put his bench at an excellent perspective to observe Jack’s form for his extensions, and it’s as perfect as every other physical part of him.
How in the world is he supposed to control the treacherous directions his thoughts take when on his worst day all Jack has to do is smile, and Bitty’s gone?
Bitty hears Jack call through two closed doors to turn out his lights and go to bed, and he resignedly rifles through his bottom drawer for lube and tissues. Jack skates toward him and throws their bodies across the rink; instead of collapsing to the ice, Bitty sinks into him and clutches on for as long as he can get away with it. They clear dishes from the table, Jack drying as Bitty washes, and he has to coach himself not to drop his plates and throw his arms around Jack’s neck.
The taut pull of Jack’s hamstrings as he bows forward, angled as if to give Eric the best view possible on purpose, is just not. Fair.
The only factor in Bitty’s favor is the preacher bench, which does a beautiful job concealing the way he’s getting hard in his shorts from the rest of the boys. It’ll only be a matter of time at this rate before he’s able to drill through to the other side, but for now he’s safe.
Now being the fleeting period between Jack’s forward dip and the low, gravelly groan that resonates through his chest as he rights himself.
“’Scuse me!” Eric squeaks, making a break for the locker room. He has to pass Jack on his way, coming dangerously close to the tight slopes of his body and tries valiantly to ignore the way his basking-merperson pose stretches the clingy fabric of his t-shirt across his back. Unfortunately, that means meeting Jack’s concerned eye before he bolts like a jackrabbit through the door.
He’s mortified — humiliated to the core that this is even happening to him, but it doesn’t stop him from slamming the toilet stall shut and locking it with trembling fingers behind him and tearing off his lifting gloves with his teeth. He shoves his waistband down to the middle of his thighs, whining through bitten lips when it skims the slippery head of his cock.
Eric is the kind of boy who likes to take things slow when he can. He’s passed as much as half of some nights with his right hand in a loose, slick fist while the fingertips of his left skip across the sensitive zones of his body. When he feels his belly clench and his toes curl, he’ll ease up so he’s barely even tickling his peaked nipple or the fuzz of his abdomen, and the wave of his orgasm ebbs away. Then, he’ll return with scraping nails and a twisting wrist until he’s on the cusp yet again.
He can’t even think about teasing himself now without dropping his head back to thud helplessly against the door.
Instead, he sweeps his tongue messily along his open palm, extending to the tip of each finger, and wraps his hand around his erection, the heat of the blood pumping under his skin smoldering. His hips twitch chaotically until he can brace his heels against the ground and his upper back against the stall, forcing himself to meet the rhythm of his fist.
His arms and hands are still shaky from his workout, so his fingers begin to spasm with the force of his grip. His free hand balled into a fist, teeth cutting sharply into his knuckles, he moans when a cramp seizes his right forearm and his fingers slip away as they collect precum.
Lips tingling when he lets his jaw fall slack, Eric strokes himself again with his wobbly fingers and gasps. He doesn’t have the patience to teeter on the edge of his orgasm now, especially not when there’s a room full of his teammates a few dozen feet away. He brackets his left hand around his other fist, and the moment his fingers weave together around the slick skin, the game is over.
He’s only distantly aware of the little breathless noises echoing in the cubicle while his hips rock up into his clasped hands. He lifts onto his toes and tips his chin toward the ceiling when the wild thought occurs to him that it could be Jack’s hand tangled in his, jerking him off in the locker room. The size is all wrong, but Bitty knows from the few precious times he’s felt them on the scruff of his neck or the ball of his shoulder that Jack’s palms are soft. This far gone, delirious with pleasure and thinking of nothing but the image of Jack prone on the chair, ass round and right there for the taking, it’s easy to let some of the details blur.
A phantom body presses along Bitty’s front, urging him to pick up his pace to the point that each down stroke slams his triceps into the door of the stall. He imagines Jack’s captain voice telling to hurry up, to wheel faster, that he’s beautiful (or at least, his goal was), and the construction of his fantasy is so intense Eric hears a second cadence of harsh breath over the roar of blood in his ears.
Muted whimpers vibrate in his throat; his mouth hangs open, working aimlessly. When he comes, jacking himself until he spurts over the sides of his hands and onto the grimy floor, Bitty takes the first breath he’s managed in at least an hour. He blinks his eyes into focus, banishing vague shadows of a familiar chiseled face from his line of sight, and surveys the damage.
If he moves his hands very delicately, he’ll be able to avoid getting any come on the dark fabric of his shorts. He can just wipe himself down with some toilet paper, clean up the most incriminating puddles on the floor, and he can wash his hands in the sink like nothing happened.
Like —
Like he didn’t just get himself off in the locker room, pathetic enough on its own, thinking about his famous, handsome, older, rich, straight friend folding himself over standard exercise equipment in an only incidentally provocative fashion.
“Oh, I can’t believe I…”
Eric would like to bury himself in a cave somewhere, but Betsy ranks slightly higher above baking over an open fire on a ramshackle tripod. He decides to brave the rest of the world again.
His clothes pulled back into their proper places, parts concealed with appropriate modesty and the most damning evidence circling the drain, he blinks hard twice in succession and slides the bolt open.
Immediately thereafter, eyes trained on the gritty tiled floor, he walks smack into the chest of one Jack Zimmermann, hockey center and recent adult fantasy.
Bitty bounces limply off of him, feeling a kind of hollow disbelief when Jack reaches out by rote to stop him from swaying off balance. Eric schools himself into a sort of casual coolness that he will never feel again, prepares to bluff his way through this just like he bluffed his way through middle school, and steps back to look up at Jack.
He just about dies when he processes the look on Jack’s face.